Staked Read online

  I picked up the guard’s lawn chair that lay half-folded on its side. Underneath it on the concrete was a sheet of paper, a list of names, all checked off. The lake houses didn’t have addresses per se. Mail was delivered in a drop box at the utility building. The local paper got left in an old vending machine with a note on it that said “For Subscribers Only.”

  On the sheet, each werewolf residence was recorded by family name and dock number. It looked like the guard had tracked who had come and gone and the license plates of the vehicles that had been driven in or out of the lot. For some of them, he’d listed their driver’s license number too.

  William’s name wasn’t on the list, but I was pretty sure that if I started killing whole families of werewolves, he was bound to show up sooner or later.

  31

  TABITHA:

  BAT GIRL

  Prissy little bitch, huh? Well excuse me for not being used to seeing some guy’s brains splattered on the wall! I should have told him about Talbot and me. I should have turned on the bodyworks and shown him what I could do, that I could have body heat, a heartbeat, even a reflection. I bet that would have wiped the smile off of his face. Prissy little bitch would turn into honey, baby, sweetie pie pretty damn quick then. At this point I didn’t know why I’d been so excited to come out to Orchard Lake in the first place.

  Most of the houses I saw looked run-down or cobbled together, built along the slanted lakeside with boat docks sticking out into the lake, and irregular steps leading from the docks to the houses. I flew a quick loop around the inlet closest to the marina. There were three houses there, one on the same side of the water as the marina, the other two staring at it across the inlet.

  There were no numbers on the docks and I wondered how they got their mail. I saw power lines but no phone lines, and the only air conditioners were window units. At the far side of the lake, where it narrowed, continuing in a wide ribbon upstream, two fishermen sat on an old wooden dock, kept afloat by what looked like white plastic barrels under the water. They each dangled their feet off the edge of the dock, beer and fishing poles close at hand.

  One of them let a flashlight shine out over the lake. It cut a blue-green swath through the water and the fish went crazy, striking at the light. The two guys thought that was hilarious; then one of them sniffed the air. “You smell something?”

  The one with the light turned it off. “No.”

  An old wooden ramp rose from the dock to cinder-block steps leading up a steep incline to an even older house. The smell of coffee carried on the breeze. Two older women and two teenagers sat on the porch playing some game with lots of little multicolored plastic pyramids.

  One of the women got up and walked halfway down the steps. “We’re about to turn in, Lucas,” said the woman. “How long are you boys going to sit out there playing with that flashlight?”

  “William said to keep an extra eye out tonight just in case,” one of the men, evidently Lucas, replied.

  “And then I suppose you’ll sleep all day?”

  “No,” said Lucas. “No, then I’m going to drive into town and work first shift. One sleepless night isn’t going to kill me.”

  These were the werewolves? They were just like normal people. Okay, normal hicks, but normal just the same. I’d expected monsters who went crazy under the light of the full moon…not real people. I flew farther down the lake, finding similar scenes. At one house, a couple lay asleep on a futon set out on the middle of their screened porch. A mother sat in a rocking chair in a different house nursing a baby who kept restlessly shifting from puppy to human. “Bert,” she called over her shoulder. “Did you find that teething medicine?”

  “No, I must have left it in the truck,” Bert’s voice replied. “Let me get some clothes on and I’ll take the boat back and get it.”

  I flew back to the marina. Eric and Greta were out on the pier untying a canoe. I landed in the center and resumed my human shape, the canoe wobbling as I did. “Are you sure these are the right people?” I whispered.

  “Yes,” said Eric, climbing into the canoe.

  “But they seem…normal.”

  “They are normal.” They each took a paddle and we began moving quietly toward the shore. “That doesn’t mean they aren’t werewolves. Look, I’ll try talking to them, but they’re not going to listen. We’ll have to fight them sooner or later…and the only way to keep you and Greta safe is to opt for sooner.”

  “And we have to kill all of them?”

  “No, Mom,” Greta said. “You can go home. Dad and I will handle it.”

  Again with the “Mom” thing. “No, I can deal, but some of them are only teenagers.”

  “And some of them are younger,” said Eric. “But I didn’t start this; they did. I tried to make peace. It didn’t work.”

  “Do I need to take care of the teenagers, too, Dad?” Greta asked.

  “Not exclusively, just the little guys.”

  “Little guys?” I asked, a chill running up my spine.

  “The children.” Eric shipped his paddle and bowed his head, letting us drift upstream on his momentum. He looked defeated and annoyed. “We can’t just kill their parents and leave them. They don’t stay small and cute, you know. They grow up into big bad werewolves who want revenge for what happened to their pack. If you don’t like it, go home.”

  “I’m just trying to understand.” I didn’t buy the whole we’ll-try-talking-first thing, and killing, not for food, but just flat-out murdering these people, werewolves or not…there was no difference between that and…I don’t know. It seemed monstrous.

  “Well, stop trying!” Eric threw down his paddle. “Just stop. It’s harder if you think about it. God, you make everything so damned difficult. Part of being a vampire is turning off the piece of you that gives a damn. You do whatever it takes to feed and care for yourself or you go crazy. Tonight it means that I have to murder a whole bunch of people who might just have more right than I do to be walking the planet in the first place, but I can’t worry about that. It’s you or them. Who would you pick?”

  I wanted to say “them” to disagree, but the words lodged in my throat. Deep inside, the same part of my brain that was offended by Drones, that became angry when lesser vampires spoke to me without permission, reared its ugly head. It would kill any of them if survival required it. The vampire within twitched inside my head and peeked out from behind my eyes. “Me,” I said quietly. “I’d pick me.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Eric said. “Don’t try to pretend otherwise. It just makes things…shit!”

  A mini spotlight hit Eric, lighting him up bright enough for anyone to see. Greta rolled noiselessly over the side into the water the instant before the light would have given her away. She didn’t even make a splash. I turned into a cat. Eric pulled his sunglasses off of his T-shirt collar and slid them on. The light came from the same two men I’d seen on the dock. Now Lucas held a crossbow and the other guy held the flashlight.

  Eric picked up his paddle and began to row toward the dock. “Either of you rednecks know a guy named William?” he asked as the canoe came closer to their little wooden dock.

  “Who wants to know?” asked Lucas.

  Eric smiled, his fangs preternaturally white against the darkness. “I’m Roger Malcolm.” He spoke with easy confidence, though he was easing the magic gun out of his pants with his right hand. Eric slid it onto the bottom of the canoe. “I just wanted to stop by one more time and talk to William.”

  “William already told you that we aren’t selling,” said Flashlight Man.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I meowed.

  Greta’s head broke the surface in the water beneath their dock, her eyes watching them predatorily through the gaps in the boards.

  “You just get on out of here, mister.” The man gestured back to the marina with his light. “William will be here soon enough if you don’t. We’re not selling, to you or anyone else.”

  “
So that’s what this is about.” Eric nodded to Greta. “Now!”

  I ducked back under the lip of the canoe.

  “Hi.” Greta sounded perky and upbeat when she grabbed their dangling legs. “Whatcha doing?”

  They vanished from the dock, the flashlight clattering momentarily on the wood before falling into the water. Shadows moved frantically beneath the surface of the lake and Eric paddled to the dock as quickly as he could, stepping out of the canoe with El Alma Perdida in his hand.

  “Lucas? Henry?” On the porch, one of the old women gripped the porch rail. “Vampire!”

  Darkness came over the canoe. I poked my head back out. Eric leveled the gun at the old woman. “Get William,” he said evenly.

  “Jimmy, Lisa, run for help!” someone shouted from the porch. The teen wolves charged off howling into the night.

  A large black werewolf broke the water behind Eric, as if he’d been fired from an underwater cannon.

  “Lucas!” the old woman yelled triumphantly as she too began to change. Eric spun and caught Lucas, slamming him against the dock and latching onto his back. El Alma Perdida skidded out of Eric’s hand toward the water, but I leapt out of the canoe and onto the dock, trapping it by the barrel with my paws.

  Lucas struggled with Eric on his back biting into his shoulder. “How do you like it?” Eric yelled between bites. “How do you like it when I sink my teeth into your fucking shoulder?”

  “Better’n a stick in the eye.” Lucas shrugged him off and leapt from the dock. I couldn’t see the churning underwater battle between Greta and her opponent, but Lucas must have thought his friend needed help. Eric caught him in midleap and smashed him back first onto the wooden dock. Boards cracked, but the dock held.

  Greta bobbed up out of the water, clinging to the body of a large brown werewolf who floated facedown. She swam for the dock and pulled herself up out of the water with one hand.

  Eric delivered a double-fisted blow to Lucas’s temple and the werewolf went still.

  Both women from the porch charged down the hill, but only one of them had transformed into a wolf. The other woman was human. I could smell it. Greta met the werewolf halfway and they rolled around together on the hillside. Greta’s laughter echoed out over the water. She was having too much fun.

  The old woman swung her open hand at Eric. He caught it with no effort at all and tossed her over his shoulder into the lake. She landed with a splash.

  “Help! Vampires! Help!” The teenagers’ voices carried clear out over the water. I dove back down into the boat. None of this was happening like it was supposed to happen. Now there were humans here, too?

  “Grandma,” Greta said, gripping the werewolf’s upper and lower jaws and forcing them open too wide. “What big teeth you have.”

  “Just kill her,” Eric said impatiently.

  Greta frowned, but did as she was told.

  I leapt back up onto the dock and resumed my human shape, complete with jeans and T-shirt. “Both of you, stop this,” I cried.

  “Go home, Tabitha.” Eric grabbed me by the chin, squeezing my cheeks. “Just go the fuck home. I’m sorry I asked you here.” He pushed me away. “I never should have turned you. I knew it wouldn’t work out. You can’t handle this.”

  “I can do anything I need to do! But this doesn’t need to be done. It’s stupid. It’s murder, not self-defense, not feeding.”

  “Looks like you got another dud, Dad,” Greta said, walking up to the porch of the house.

  The woman Eric had thrown in the water floated in the darkness, watching us. Eric pointed at her. “Don’t be stupid,” he said. “Swim off to the marina or something.”

  He watched her swim away, looking relieved that he didn’t need to kill her. “What do you want from me, Tabitha?”

  “I want…” I want you not to push me away, I thought. I want you to understand that I’m still me, and then I want to show you what I can do, that I can be like a live girl for you, that I can be warm and sexy and still hunt with you. I want you to be the same reluctant romantic that you always were, the man who isn’t always in the right, but tries.

  “Do you want me to be all sexy and dangerous?” He sniffed the air, checking for werewolves. “Am I supposed to be Tom Cruise?”

  “No. I…” Did he really want me to leave? Was he pushing me away on purpose?

  “Am I supposed to go fight crime with you? Open a detective agency? Look for a cure? Because it’s not happening. You wanted a monster and you got one!” Waving his gun around as he spoke, Eric came toward me, his intemperate footsteps causing the dock to creak in protest. One of the white plastic barrels supporting it floated out from underneath, dropping the dock closer to the water’s surface on one side.

  “You’re not a monster!” I shouted.

  “I’m not?” His voice cracked as he asked. El Alma Perdida hummed angrily, but Eric’s eyes blazed brightly just the same. His claws came out, and with them, the fangs. He snarled at me, doing everything he could to be less than what he was.

  “No. Not really. You’re the man I love.”

  “Oh, please,” Eric said, his features becoming human once again. “Maybe you loved me when you were alive, but now you’re dead. You don’t even smell like you anymore.”

  “But I—” But I can, I tried to say. Eric cut me off.

  “Just shut up, Tabitha,” he yelled in a voice so loud that my ears rang. “Listen,” he snapped, grabbing me by the shoulder. “Do you hear that?” Howl after howl rang out into the night. “Do you see those?” He pointed out over the water to werewolves in pontoon boats heading our way, some swimming in the lake. “I do not have time to talk about this right now. Some things are more important than how you feel.”

  And he was right. He was right. This wasn’t the time or place. In truth, it was way past time for this discussion, but he hadn’t been ready for it, and probably never would be. He didn’t like to think about things too hard, especially not emotional things. He didn’t want to admit that he loved me, but I knew that he did. He had to.

  But I had to rethink my tactics. Chasing him wasn’t working. Rolling over and letting him act however he wanted just made things worse. He had to realize that he loved me, had to be willing to admit it to me and to himself. And he couldn’t do that with me giving in to him over and over again.

  Which left only one way to get his attention.

  “I hate you!” My claws raked down his face, leaving behind furrows of ravaged white flesh. He didn’t react, didn’t yell or scream. He just stood there, an inhuman statue.

  “That makes two of us,” he spat.

  “If you love me, come find me. Otherwise…we’re finished,” I said. I turned into a bat and flew off into the night. I could pick up my things at the Demon Heart and make it to the Highland Towers by morning.

  Phillip would take care of me. I knew he would. He knew how to treat a lady. He was nice and sweet…and short, fat, and bald, but he would do for starters. If Eric couldn’t get a grip on his feelings for me, refused to acknowledge them, never came to get me…then a vampire queen deserved better. I deserved better.

  32

  ERIC:

  ILL MET BY MOONLIGHT

  Greta and I waited for William on the front porch. We didn’t talk about Tabitha. Out in the dark, pawfalls sounded on the damp evening soil. A small armada of pontoon boats and speedboats floated in the middle of the lake, biding their time. Smart puppies. They wanted me surrounded before attacking. Overhead, the crescent moon watched our little war games. I pretended not to hear the rustle of seventy-plus werewolves panting in the night. Greta found an old transistor radio and turned it on.

  “I forget,” I asked Greta, “is it waxing or waning that’s bad news for them, good news for us?” She shrugged.

  The same classic rock station popped and hissed to life, treating us all to a little Led Zeppelin.

  A wolf, white as snow and large as a lion, rounded the corner of the house.

 
“Waning is good for you,” he snarled. “Tonight’s moon is waxing crescent.” Huh. Even the moon was out to screw me.

  “What kept you?” I asked.

  “A meeting.”

  “It would have saved you three packmates and a guard if you’d been at the marina.”

  “They are with the Lord now, just as you will soon be with your master the devil.”

  “Has anybody ever told you how cool it is that you guys talk in wolf form? I wish I could speak English when I change, but it all comes out like animal talk.”

  “You think this is funny.”

  “Not really.” I pulled the pistol out of the back of my jeans and scratched my temple with the barrel. “I think us fighting each other is pretty damn stupid though. You might be able to hurt me, but I have El Alma Perdida.”

  If he didn’t know what El Alma Perdida was, then I was screwed and the rest of my night was going to be like the bloodbath at the docks. Tabitha was right about killing them being murder, but wrong about it being needless. Murder can be necessary. If I looked weak to the wolves, like I wouldn’t carry out any threat I made, there was no way William would listen.

  William didn’t blink. “If I shoot you with this,” I warned, “you don’t go to your reward. You get trapped by the gun. You don’t want to spend eternity in a bullet, William. I know you don’t.”

  The other werewolves began to close in, jumping out of boats and onto the embankment. Others came out of the woods.

  “You killed my son!” William bellowed.

  “No, but you did kill mine,” I replied calmly. “I’m still willing to overlook that.”

  “Dad!” Greta crossed her arms with a loud humph. “Can’t we just kill them all? They tortured me and they killed Kyle.”

  “Not yet, sweetheart.” My eyes never left William’s. “I killed a bunch of werewolves for that already.”

  William blurred, a mass of growling angry white fur charging at me, going for my throat. If I hadn’t had the gun out, I’d never have managed to bring it to bear.